A Poem Created During My Morning Run

These are style suggestions, and mostly subjective, I think! So take whatever I say with a grain of salt?

Title: A Poem Created During My Morning Run

I'm a fan of the not telling too much, plus, it's a hook. During my morning run .... -> and then allow us to find out! Adding "A Poem" in there is self-referential, and this poem isn't in the meta-self-referentiating style, so I guess the better question is whether or not you want the fourth wall to be invisble, or whether you want it to be broken.

Style

As I'm reading it, I notice the poem has this contemplative style to it. It sounds very matter-of-fact, like you want for the reader to understand what is there in the words, rather than for the reader to experience what is there in the action of the words. Ideally, a poem should have a mixture of two things, showing and telling, telling and showing and so forth, but this poem is all telling. Telling: thighs are touching, breasts are smushed, speaker runs because of her body and yet is impeded by her running, proud runner (self conscious? Something she has to prove?), shorts don't have pockets= no phone=running can be dangerous, running is a metaphor for speaker's life, better to walk, smell the wildflowers, take your time. All of these thoughts are stated in the lines rather than implied by tone, or atmosphere or feelings or emotions or structure or imagery, figurative language, etc. So two things: it can be a good thing, depending on what you want to accomplish. If you are shooting for clarity as priority, then you have achieved this, I understood this poem and in some ways relate to what is said. What you give up though is my empathy. I don't really care to read this a second time (I don't need to. One swallow, that's all I need.) And I'm not really experiencing anything, I'm just reading.

The effect is the difference between: "The sun is shining, yet I am depressed"
And: "The sun digs his daggers into skin/ lonely am I drowned by white blood."

If what you want is for the readers to experience, to feel it, to be shocked or inspired, then I might suggest to show more, through tone and figurative language. Sometimes omitted certain things, but then implying the feelings can be very powerful because it provides tension. Why is she running? Why does she feel this way? Giving us bread crumbs to build a picture by the end makes us more involved in the work.

Structure


I am a fan of form+content working in tandem to creating a style, it makes things very nice and clean and crisp. What does that mean? Well, this poem is about the speaker's thoughts while running, it is expository. At the very end, we learn of its importance, how it becomes a metaphor describing the speaker's life. Treat the poem as life itself, rather than just a poem about someone's life. One way to do this is to write it in such a way that it feels like running. Maybe think about breaking your lines in an even one-two pace, create spaces where the speaker might feel out of breath, and increase your pacing. Fast! The speaker is running! Thoughts are fast, her movements are fast! The tone in this is reflectional, maybe make the tone proud instead? That way, when we get to the end

"You run like you live. Impatient, proud, and alone."

We intrinsically know it before it hits us, and not only that, but we've experienced it ourselves in the reading of it.


Content

Nothing to say here, I love the idea of this and the way that this comes together. There are several ideas in this, really. It talks about body-image and also the problems and struggles that come with it. And how does this speaker deal with it? Running's not only for her body, but by the end, it becomes a way for her to reflect for her mind, about her life, about what's important. By the end, all of those struggles don't really come to matter with the realization of what she has discovered. And I love that.

Hopes this helps!

~ as always, Audy

That's pretty talented! I can hardly think thoughts let alone write poems while running. I like you all ready though, we have two things in common, running and poetry. SO let me review.

In the first stanza I felt "My thighs touch when I walk much less run" deserved a comma in "when I walk, much less run" to break it up a bit. Its a bit run-on-sentancy.

I love your form of using brackets to comment on what you've just written. It breaks up the poem in an interesting way that almost has the feel of running, like taking a breath in between ideas, if that makes sense.

In the second stanza, I disliked the way you made the first sentence so long, and then repeated the idea in the second one. I would have liked it better if you found another way to say it, but poetically I can see why you used this form.

I love this part "I’m not quite sure what gets me
all the way to the end of the road
but I’m running back for breakfast. "

It's my favorite part of the poem. It basically encapsulates all of running. To outsiders it seem like a person is just making themselves suffer, and the reason to run is skewed by the persons feeling at the time. What really motivates us to run? The same thing that motivates us to write poetry?

I also love the part about pride. I do this all the time. I hate letting people see me stop running haha.

Its a bit strange in the second last stanza when the "slightly" sketchy mill becomes "incredibly sketchy." Perhaps you could find closer synonyms to describe the mill. Or another word for sketchy to replace one of those.

The ending was a weird mix of a let-down and very talented poetry. I heard everything that was said, and it was so colored with humor and personal experience that it was hard not to love. The simile between how you run and live was brilliant, and it kind of returns to the breakfast debate, asking yourself why you run. Its a very proud moment to see that despite this voice calling you crazy you still continue to run. You think that there should be some motivator other than "breakfast" and your not sure what that is, yet you continue to run.

I think if you mirrored the way the last stanza was written a little more in the rest of the poem it would be perfect. By that I mean cutting down on a little of the extra that doesn't need to be resaid and shaping it a bit more. But as I said before it is a great read for this runner/poet. Nice job.